David Foster Wallace's Self-Help Books Removed From Archive

In the spring of this year I wrote a piece about David Foster Wallace’s self-help books that was published here in April. It appears that all the books referenced in that piece have since been removed from the Ransom Center’s collection of Wallace’s papers. The collection, which used to contain 320-odd books, now contains 299. The remaining book list can be searched here.

It never occurred to me that Wallace’s estate would be in a position to rescind part of the sale of his documents to the Ransom Center; I wrote what I did under the assumption that these books would remain available to anyone who was interested in seeing them. I was very sorry—or rather, entirely freaked out—to learn that that will no longer be the case.